Throughout "Valley Fever Epidemic" it states that Valley Fever can cause secondary symptoms. Some of the more common ones are arthritis, rheumatism, fibromyagia, chronic fatigue, osteomyelitis and more. Bone and joint pain (osteomyelitis) are very common and happen to too many people that contract VF.

Perhaps you should reread the book as it is so chockful of information. It is easy to overlook some of the information inside it if one reads it only once. I know for sure it has been mentioned in the symptoms chapter and periodically throughout the book.

Hello,
I was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder last week and the Physical Therapist said the cocci is most likely the culprit since there isn't any other reason for me having it. They wont state for sure since this would require them to remove some of the fluid and test it, which I thought would be easy, but he said it is not done.
I still don't understand why this disease is so under-reported and very few mds take it seriously.
Joint pains, fatigue are something I deal with every day. My md says it is the VF, but of course since my titers have been negative it's difficult to prove.

Throughout "Valley Fever Epidemic" it states that Valley Fever can cause secondary symptoms. Some of the more common ones are arthritis, rheumatism, fibromyagia, chronic fatigue, osteomyelitis and more. Bone and joint pain (osteomyelitis) are very common and happen to too many people that contract VF.

Perhaps you should reread the book as it is so chockful of information. It is easy to overlook some of the information inside it if one reads it only once. I know for sure it has been mentioned in the symptoms chapter and periodically throughout the book.

Thank you for your reply; however I'm going through a disability with the VA; They gave me service connection for VF. But they continue to state the VF did not cause a secondary condition of inflammatory arthritis.
I have been having mulitiple joint pains since I contracted VF in 2006.
They main reason for the denial is there in no medical liteature that states this. Do you believe referencing this book would so medical evidiance?

again thank you for your responce and your hard work informing us of VF.

But they continue to state the VF did not cause a secondary condition of inflammatory arthritis.

Technically all arthritis is inflammatory, as noted in the Official VFS Glossary or the back of the 1st edition of Valley Fever Epidemic, but if that isn't enough there is more you can add to the evidence to show VF can cause arthritis.

I looked at a sampling of the peer reviewed journals for you. None are free online as far as I know but it would be easy for your lawyer or legal representative to get these. However it may be a lot cheaper to ask a librarian to help you get the articles from these citations instead. Librarians can often get copies of the article free for you even if it isn't fully available at your local library and then you could just hand the article to your lawyer.

Here are a few you might consider using in your case specifically because they mention arthritis:

Pappagianis D.
Coccidioidomycosis.
Semin Dermatol. 1993 Dec;12(4):301-9. Review.
PMID: 8312146
It has this quotation after talking about the then-current drugs: "However coccidioidal meningitis, coccidioidal arthritis, and acute coccidioidal respiratory insufficiency pose significant challenges to the available therapy." Which is still true 16 years later

For legal proceedings, get them all so there can be visible weight to the documentation. These are all citations to articles in highly respected medical journals. VF arthritis is mentioned in all of them and they should be absolutely recognizable to any honest medical reviewer as a written testimony that coccidioidomycosis can cause arthritis and joint pain.

The next book is likely to have even more variety of conditions discussed and it will contain even more hundreds of peer reviewed citations for review.

The VA is actaully the only one not accepting this, the Army has assessed that VF is was in fact assiociated with my inflammatory arthritis. this was document in my medical records after a medical board came to the conclusion.

I was sent to a rheumatologist anfter the plumoary specialist I have been seeing since 2006 got fed up with the VA not taking his opinion of the inflammatory arthrits was caused by VF.

The rheumatologist wrote in his assessmnet a possible inflammatory arthritis.

The onset of this condition was after an infection of valley fever, therefore there is a strong suspicion that this inflammatory arthritis was caused by valley fever.

Perhaps a form of spondyloarthropathy, or an undifferentiated arthritis.

This rheumatologist feels strongly that VF caused the inflammatory arthritis.

I meant to post this a few nites ago but have been sick and unable to get back to it. I was looking at some of the reviews that Dave talked about. So considering I'm a valley fever survivor and have developed arthritis, chronic pain, chronic fatigue with joint and bone pain and have not felt the same, I did a little searching on the articles he mentioned. Here are a couple links I found if you want to look at them.